Monday 14 February 2011 02.59 EST
First published on Monday 14 February 2011 02.59 EST

It's the film I'd been most looking forward to; in fact it was the film that made me certain I'd come to the Berlin film festival. Wim Wenders's 3D Pina – planned with the great choreographer Pina Bausch, who died two days before shooting was due to start – premiered yesterday. British fans won't have too long to wait. The film has a UK release date (though there won't be many screens, be certain of that) of 22 April. The question is, with the nascent technology of 3D at his disposal (and there's more on that in my news report) can Wenders get close to capturing the magic of Bausch's art?

To a certain extent, yes. The 3D has been harnessed judiciously (Bausch herself was absolutely clear it should not be there as a gimmick – good note). The problem with dance on film is the failure of the screen to convey depth; and 3D does, to an extent, lend the work the necessary sculptural quality. In fact I found it worked with varying degrees of success depending on the work in hand. In Café Müller, where several characters occupy different parts of the stage moving relatively slowly, it worked particularly well. In Sacré du Printemps, with its frenetic, urgent steps, less so: 3D is still struggling to capture movement made at high speed. But the immediacy of feeling right among the dancers in Sacré – a terrifying piece – compensated for that to an extent. Was it a replacement for seeing Bausch's work live? Certainly not; but for most of us, that's a rare enough treat.

Had Bausch lived, the film would have been entirely different. She would have been at its centre, and we would have followed her and the company on tour. One misses that lost film. Without Bausch – except via some heart-rending archive footage – we now focus on a number of dancers in the company, who speak, briefly, about Bausch – and then put into movement, much more eloquently, their thoughts about her. For the Bausch fan, this is marvellous. These are familiar faces and bodies and it is a treat to see them showcased. But I worried that for the non-Pina devotee, the prevailing atmosphere was too reverential and insufficiently analytical, or even explicatory. The whole film, quite inevitably, feels like an act of mourning. I think Andrew Pulver's review is a very clear and fair account of the film from the perspective of a Bausch rookie. Another friend who saw the film, never having come across Bausch before, said he was blown away by the choreography and just wanted to see the works performed complete; it is pleasing that the film is capable, then, of claiming scalps for Bausch fandom.

In short, if you are a Pina fan, you won't need me to tell you to see the film when it is released in the UK on 22 April. And if you're not, give it a go; if nothing else, it is a fascinating marker in the development of 3D.

The director of Pina, which pays tribute to the legendary German choreographer Pina Bausch and has had its world premiere at the Berlin film festival, tells Charlotte Higgins how filming in 3D helped honour her memory